Portfolio Building Workshop

Instructor: Sep Dadsetan, PhD

2025-01-27

Brought to you by SoCal RUG


Introduction

Overview of today’s agenda:

  • Introduction
  • Quarto Basics
  • Building the Portfolio Website
  • Publishing and Maintains the Website
  • Closing

Welcome! Meet Your Workshop Facilitator

Your Role

  • Director, RWD Analytics @ Labcorp

Your Expertise

  • I’ve been a developer since 2000 (HTML/CSS/JS)
  • Got into Data Science in 2014
  • I’ve had a website (of some shape or form) since 2000

Your Passion

  • Passionate about helping others be their best selves

Fun Fact

  • I was a professional DJ for 15 years

I’m excited to guide you through creating an impressive portfolio with Quarto!

What is Quarto?

  • Quarto is “An open-source scientific and technical publishing system”

But what is it really?

It’s an EXTREMELY powerful software that allows you to inline your code and prose to create a large array of different outputs like HTML, PDF, websites, books, etc.

You’ll see what we’re talking about 😉

You can find all the info you need at quarto.org

Why Create a Portfolio Site?

1. Showcase Your Skills

  • Highlight your expertise, projects, and accomplishments.
  • Provide concrete examples of your work (e.g., code, visualizations, reports).
  • Fun place to play with ideas and technologies

2. Build Your Personal Brand

  • Stand out in a competitive job market.
  • Share your unique style and professional story.

3. Increase Visibility

  • Make it easy for recruiters, clients, or collaborators to find you.
  • Share your work with a broader audience online.

4. Demonstrate Technical Proficiency

  • Showcase your ability to use tools like Quarto, R Markdown, or web development skills.
  • Prove your commitment to staying current with industry standards.

5. Foster Networking Opportunities

  • Connect with like-minded professionals and potential collaborators.
  • Provide a professional platform to engage with others in your field.

“Your portfolio is more than a website—it’s your professional handshake in the digital world.”

  • See some examples of portfolio websites (e.g., qmdclub.com)

Tool Setup and Walkthrough

For today…

  • You must have a Github account. Please create one if you don’t.
  • We’ll use Github Codespaces with VS Code

For future reference…

If you were to explore doing this on your own, you’d need the following:

  • IDE (ex, VS Code, RStudio Desktop, Positron, etc)
  • Python, R, and/or Julia
  • Quarto
  • Cloud Version Control is highly recommended (eg, Github, GitLab, Bitbucket, etc)
  • You could also just continue to use your codespace…

Intro to Codespaces

  • It’s a development environment in the cloud (specifically on Github)
  • How to get your space launched

Thank You’s

  • First of all, everyone here for listening and participating
  • SoCal RUG and UCI for having me
  • Developers behind these wonderful tools